Georgia Republicans Hiding the Law [UPDATED]

Just to be clear, at some point in the last few days, Lexis/Nexis started charging for access to the Georgia Code. This was apparently in error and after this post went up, the State Legislature’s staff sprung into action and was able to get Lexis/Nexis to correct the problem.

One of the great things that states these days do is make their code of laws freely available for public searching. Georgia has had a great, easy to use unannotated version of its laws online for several years, until now.

While ignorance of the law is no excuse, Georgians should now be able to say the legislature has stiffed them. No longer does the legislature provide free access to the laws they write. Now you have to pay to get a Lexis/Nexis account (not a cheap option) to search the Georgia Code.

If this is what the GOP does at the managerial level in the legislature, while overlooking the fact that its 800 number is now a phone sex line, perhaps we need to put Democrat managers back in charge.

UPDATE: I did call the House Public Information Office and I guess they were so perplexed by the porn line that they didn’t contradict me on the paid Lexis/Nexis Account.

I’m told by a Senate source, however, that there was never an intention for this to be a paid service via Lexis and Lexis is working to fix the problem and make it free again.

But…while we’re on the subject…when it wasn’t on Lexis-Nexus, the lookups for research of OCGA were a piece of cake. Now we have to punch-down a whole bunch of bullets in order to MAYBE find the exact section of the Code to cite.